And Then There's This Cloaked Wannabe
by ophelia8
Summary: Jar-Jar wants to fill Sidious' apprentice vacancy in the worst way . . . with himself.


Author Note: This was written for a challenge in which I had to rewrite the "you're breaking my heart" scene on Mustafar, only with "another couple" substituted for Anakin and Padmé.

I chose a pretty loose interpretation of "couple."

* * *

"Meesa bein' more powerful den allen da Jedi!!"

_Oh, no,_ Obi-Wan thought, as he walked down the ship's ramp. _This can't be good._

"Em . . . yes, I see," came a cracked, poisonous-sounding voice. Actually, it was a cracked, poisonous-sounding voice that suggested its owner really wished some horridly embarrassing incident would be over as soon as possible. "However, your skills and experience do not match our needs at this--"

"Wheresa bein' da Jedi?" the first voice shrilled. "Meesa bombad! Wit' meesa's new powers, meesa wipen dem out, allen dem! Whackity-whackity-whack, whack, whack, whack . . ."

When Obi-Wan reached the Mustafar landing platform, the sight that greeted him was not . . . _quite_ what he'd expected. For one thing, his fallen former Padawan was nowhere to be seen. For another, Jar-Jar Binks was standing on the corroded metal of the landing pad, backlit by sprays of lava, and performing some kind of strange movements reminiscent of a very poor smashball player attempting to kill an insect with a club. He was also wearing some sort of hooded bathrobe that had been wrapped tightly around his body, and which ended at his knees.

The deranged Gungan more or less completely failed to resemble the shadow swathed in a black cloak which stood a few meters away. The shadow's inky darkness was unnatural; unlike Jar-Jar's orange-lit bathrobe, the other creature's cloak caught no light at all from the arcing gouts of lava. It was as if the dark shape were not a being, but a hole—perhaps into the void of space between galaxies, or perhaps into the grave. It would have been terrifying, if the dark creature weren't holding up a pair of incongruously-white hands in a gesture that seemed to be begging the Gungan to stop flailing about. Apparently it needn't have bothered—Jar-Jar stepped on one of his own pant legs and tripped, landing flat on his face. His ears flopped over his eyes. "D'oof!" cried Jar-Jar, in that really grating rusty-hinge voice of his.

The shadow grabbed up the folds of his cloak and quickly backed away, as if Jar-Jar were some kind of vermin that might suddenly scurry up the fabric and defile him. "Lord . . . Jar-Jar," the shadow began, in a manner that suggested he was trying to be very reasonable, despite the disturbing situation, "This just isn't going to work out. Think of your career as a representative of Naboo. Think of all the Gungan people who . . . tolerate you. Think of . . ." The shadow seemed to have run out of things to think of himself. Finally he said, "Oh, surely, there must be _something_ in your life more valuable than twirling about in a black bathrobe and falling over."

Jar-Jar struggled to get up, accidentally pinned himself to the ground by leaning his weight on his own ear, fell down again, and then finally managed to regain his feet. "No!" he cried out. "Meesa gonna be bombad Sit' Lord! Meesa no fearen da dark side! Meesa bwingen peace, justice, fweedom, and senility to meesa's new Empire!!"

"Your new Empire?" Obi-Wan cried out, frankly stunned by both the eccentricity of Jar-Jar's performance and the depth of the Gungan's delusions.

Jar-Jar whirled around, pointed at Obi-Wan and shouted, "Da Jedi!" in what could only be described as a triumphant shriek. "You no maken meesa killen you," Jar-Jar said. The words were close to incomprehensible, but they came out sounding like a threat.

"Jar-Jar . . ." Obi-Wan began, suddenly feeling as at a loss as the shadow apparently had a few moments earlier. "My allegiance is to the Republic . . . to democracy." What did this stupid Gungan think he was supposed to say? _"Oooh, I surrender, scary unarmed lunatic in a bathrobe?"_

This just appeared to infuriate Jar-Jar. "Yousa no bein' wit' me, yousa bein' against me!" he shrilled, stomping the landing pad with his foot.

"Only a Sith--" Obi-Wan said, and then suddenly realized that this didn't really apply to Jar-Jar. So he added, "or an idiot wannabe, deals in absolutes. I will do what I must." He dropped back into a guard position and ignited his saber. He had come here to end "the Emperor's" reign before it began, even if he had to sacrifice what he held most dear to do it. Since Jar-Jar was somewhere between a nasty eye infection and the march of approaching battle droids on the list of things Obi-Wan held most dear, offing him would actually improve his day considerably.

"Yousa just tryen it!" Jar-Jar shrieked, and then sort of flung himself more or less in the direction of the Jedi Master. It took him a couple of tries to get near him—not because Obi-Wan was dodging, but because Jar-Jar's aim wasn't very good. He waved his arms around a lot as an apparent substitute for having a laser blade, and had time to shout out, "Yousa underestimatin' meesa's power!!" before literally impaling himself on Obi-Wan's lightsaber.

Obi-Wan hadn't been expecting that, and he probably looked as surprised as Jar-Jar did as the Gungan slid off the blade and onto the ground. Once Jar-Jar had collapsed, Obi-Wan just stood there and looked at the corpse for a moment. None of this was quite going the way he'd anticipated.

"Er—thank you, Master Jedi," the shadow said, in a voice Obi-Wan found he could almost place. "That little incident was . . . em--unfortunate."

At that moment, a singed and battered Anakin came trudging up a stairway from the planet surface, smelling of sulfurous smoke and looking depressed.

"Anakin!" Obi-Wan cried.

"Lord Vader!" the shadow called out, at the same moment.

It was only hearing Anakin's "Sith title" that reminded Obi-Wan he was supposed to turn and draw on him. Suddenly, the shadow produced a red blade from somewhere beneath his voluminous cloak, as if prepared to defend his new servant.

Anakin waved dismissively at both of them before clomping up the ramp into the spaceship. "Forget it," he said. "I changed my mind. The Jedi are a buncha sissies, and the dark side is for idiot wannabes." Before Obi-Wan had a chance to respond, the ramp hissed closed, and a moment later he found himself shouting after Anakin, who took off without him.

Obi-Wan was still yelling at his former student when the shadow powered down his lightsaber and gave a dismal-sounding sigh. "Well, that's the way things go sometimes, I suppose," he said.

Obi-Wan turned and looked at him incredulously. That was it?! Civilization as the galaxy knew it had ended in less than a day, and that was all this creature could say?

Appalled amazement kept him rooted to the spot as the shadow walked over and put a friendly arm around his shoulders. "My boy," the shadow said, "have you ever considered a career as a Sith Lord?"

* * *

END


End file.
